Here's our floors with stain sample on them. I like that the reclaimed floors still have color variation from board to board too

I don't think you'll find any stain or staining technique that will give you a wide light to dark finish variation. As I understand it, that look comes from the wood, not the stain.
Like you, we have 4" white oak "mill run" (what our GC called it; I suspect it is the same as character grade) flooring, and we chose to go with MinWax "Provincial". There isn't a stark light-to-dark difference between the boards, but we do have a lot of grain variation and plenty of knot holes.
Good luck with your finishing!

Another random shot.

Thanks for your comment, we were looking at provincial and it helps to see it!! Was it water popped? (water put on floor before stain)
Do you remember if your floors looked like ours did before staining? I was hoping that staining wouldn't disguise the color variation we do have from board to board

This post was edited by tulips33 on Tue, Jun 24, 14 at 10:58

No water popping, just stain & poly.

Here's what it looked like during installation. Sorry for poor image quality; the pic was taken on a gloomy winter day, without any interior lighting.

Here is a link that might be useful:

This post was edited by Bungalow14 on Tue, Jun 24, 14 at 11:09

If you're DIYing, you can tape off individual boards and stain them darker, or slightly redder, etc. before staining the whole floor. That will give you more variation, but it's very labor intensive and no pro will do that without charging you a mint. Also, a penetrating oil finish will give you more depth to the wood than a water based poly.

You can, but it's a tedious process for DIY and expensive if you hire it done.

Instead of staining with a single color, which tends to make a uniform appearance, you select or create 3 colors and apply them board by board ... about 20% should be stained the darkest color (picking the darkest boards for this), 20% the lightest color or light boards left unstained, and the remainder stained the middle shade.

What with the board-by board work, itâÂÂs a tedious PITA. Awesome when it's done, but .... how bad do you want it.

I would totally do this but I don't think my builder will let b/c of time constraints....one of the things I hate about letting go of the control...